Plea Agreements and Consent Judgments Denaturalization cases reviewed for this report usually conclude by way of plea agreement (criminal), or consent judgment (civil). These agreements purportedly represent a resolution reached between the government and the defendant about a case, which prevents the case from going to trial. In a plea agreement, the defendant agrees to admit guilt to one or more of the charges, usually in return for some concession from the prosecution. In a consent judgment, both parties agree to a particular outcome by stipulation. Once the judge in the case accepts the plea agreement or consent judgment, a binding judgment is handed down based on what the parties submit to the court as their resolution. Defendants forfeit several rights and protections when they enter into plea agreements and consent judgments. In the criminal context, a plea agreement requires a defendant to knowingly and voluntarily waive many rights, including three core constitutional rights: the right to a jury trial, the right against self-incrimination, and the right to confront witnesses. Generally, the right to appeal is also lost, unless the defendant can show that the agreement was not entered into voluntarily—a high bar. In the closed denaturalization cases reviewed by the Justice Initiative as of May 2019, 77% of defendants accepted a plea or settled.469 As noted throughout this report, denaturalization is an obscure area of law in which few immigration attorneys are even conversant, and which may appear particularly abstruse to public defenders, retained counsel, or the public. The many notice issues, application of various forms of detention, and dire permanent consequences for individuals and their families involved all make the use of plea bargaining and settlement agreements highly suspect in terms of their fundamental fairness in these cases. These factors are especially grievous considering the substantial number of cases in which older citizens who have been law-abiding members of society for a decade or more are suddenly subject to the full coercive power of the country’s deeply conflated criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems. Plea and settlement agreements reviewed for this report contained immigration protection waivers;470 agreements to relinquish legal permanent residency status or other statuses; agreements to JROs; promises to assist in deportation; agreements to be removed to countries to which the denaturalized person had no apparent ties; and, in at least one agreement, the promise that a spouse will self-deport and renounce U.S. citizenship. Judicial Removal Orders Judicial removal orders (or JROs) are not unique to denaturalization cases, but their use in denaturalization matters is in keeping with the overall approach, criticized here, of using denaturalization as a harsh and expedient immigration enforcement measure, and a prelude to deportation (or quasi-indefinite confinement in cases where deportation cannot be achieved). 106 UNMAKING AMERICANS